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Sunday, April 08, 2012

A Short Story about Two Men and Zakat

Paying Zakat is the best way to purify and add substance to your money.

A fictional story written by Sameer...

There is a rich man who has £500,000 in his bank account and he realises that he must pay £12,500 Zakat (2.5% of his savings). He spends many hours thinking about what he should do, he thinks that it's not fair on him if he pays so much Zakat. He doesn't feel right giving such a big amount away in a matter of minutes. So he convinces himself that he should only give £2,500 Zakat and he feels that is sufficient.

A few months later, the man is on holiday and his bag goes missing and as a result he loses a phone worth £500 and a laptop worth £1,000. He returns from holiday and he realises that his car insurance has gone up by £500. He invested some money in shares some time ago and unfortunately share prices drop dramatically and he is forced to lose £5,000. He feels frustrated and starts to think that it is his bad luck that is causing him to lose so much money. He buys a used car for himself which lets him down a few weeks later due to a faulty engine, and he ends up selling it, at a loss of £3,000. One day, the man sits down and adds up all his losses and he realises that he has lost £10,000 due to misfortune. When the man reflects upon his loss, he remembers that £10,000 is the Zakat money that he should have given to the needy. He realises that it would have been much better for him to give the money as Zakat than to hold on to it and go through all the adversities he had to face. The man acknowledges that without the Mercy of Allah, he would never have had so much money in his bank in the first place, so by holding on to it and not paying the full amount of Zakat, he was being ungrateful.

There is another man who has just enough money to make Zakat compulsory for him. He calculates the Zakat due and pays all of it. He believes that the Zakat money is not for him, so by giving it to the poor he is not losing anything. The man feels that every penny he has, is a gift from Allah, then why should he hesitate when it comes to helping the poor, in order to earn the Pleasure of Allah. The man struggles financially later in the year, but somehow money starts to come to him, from sources that he couldn't have imagined. At work, his manager leaves the company and he gets promoted, his salary is doubled. He becomes the youngest person to become a manager in his company. In the same year, the man becomes ill and requires an expensive operation. He is worried about the cost of the operation and decides to postpone it till he has more savings. However, a new scheme is launched by a local hospital which makes him eligible to have the operation for free. The operation goes well and the man recovers after a few weeks. He starts to think about how he has been fortunate over the year, every difficult situation has been taken care of and he has come out stronger.

MORAL: Paying Zakat is the best way to purify and add substance to your money and to keep yourself protected from any form of misfortune.